(Press-Register/Evergreen Courant)The Alabama Supreme Court has upheld the election of Pete Wolf III, right, as mayor of Evergreen after a seesaw legal contest over an apparent two-vote victory by incumbent Larry Fluker, left, in 2008.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- The
Alabama Supreme Court has upheld the election of Pete Wolf III as mayor
of Evergreen after a seesaw legal contest over an apparent two-vote
victory by incumbent Larry Fluker in 2008.

The Supreme Court ruled
Friday that it did not have enough evidence to overturn a lower court
that ruled Wolf won by five votes after a number of illegal ballots were
eliminated.

"We have reviewed the record, and we cannot say that
the circuit court's decision was plainly and palpably wrong," the court
said.

The incumbent, who was Evergreen's first black mayor,
finished narrowly ahead in the 2008 runoff election, with 1,028 votes to
1,026 for Wolf, who is white.

The campaigns divided the town on
racial lines, and charges of vote fraud were raised by both sides. The
Supreme Court's ruling affirmed the findings of specially appointed
retired Mobile County Circuit Judge Edward McDermott, who ruled last
year that Wolf won with 1,002 votes to Fluker's 997.

It also
addressed the issue of whether the secretary of state's office or
municipalities determine who is a registered voter in city elections.

The
court said state law is clear that municipalities create their own
voter lists. But it rejected Fluker's argument that two voters should
not have been disqualified for not being on the secretary of state's
voter list.

It also turned back several other arguments that
Fluker raised in an attempt to give him a majority of legal votes in the
runoff.